328 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



running southerly into the White River and the Connecticut, and the latter 

 into the Winooski and Lake Champlain. The quarries lie on the westerly 

 side of this valley, where full of richness and beauty as they are, they have 

 been lying dormant, but in full view of settlers, and even explorers, for years. 

 The marble so far as it has been discovered, lies in a line running nearly north 

 and south, a distance of about half a mile immediately contiguous to the 

 Vermont Central Railroad the rails passing, indeed, at the very foot of the 

 quarries. The quarries located and now owned by the American Verd- 

 antique Company, consist of six or eight out-crops, a few rods distant from 

 each other, and ranging in height above the railroad from twenty to one 

 hundred feet. One of these quarries has been opened and worked to consid- 

 erable extent sufficient to test the quality of the material and to indicate an 

 exhaustless supply. The marble is found to improve rather than otherwise, 

 as the quarrying proceeds, in texture and beauty, and in all the qualities 

 which render it so superior to other marbles, especially in strength. It is 

 ascertained also, to a practical certainty, that blocks of any desirable dimen- 

 sions can be got out and wrought with facility into all the various forms 

 which utility and ornament may suggest. Hitherto whenever any thing like 

 the Verd-antique has been discovered among our rocks, it has been in small 

 fragmentary quantities, and never in a condition to be available for any use- 

 ful or ornamental purpose. So universal has been the experience in this 

 respect, that every scientific man, on first hearing of the discovery at Roxbury, 

 has at once declared his firm conviction that the Verd-antique could not be 

 found there in any useful quantity. The doubt has, however, been dispelled 

 by the production of perfect and entire blocks 20 feet in length, 8 in breadth, 

 and 3 or 4 hi thickness. The green color, varying from the deepest to the 

 lightest hue, pervades ; and the seams or veins are of the purest white and 

 scattered throughout the material in every direction, with a variegation of 

 gracefulness which no art could produce. The Verd-antique Company have 

 contracted with the G-overnment to furnish a considerable quantity of this 

 magnificent material for ornamental portions of the new Capitol at Washing- 

 ton. They are now engaged in fulfilling this contract, and among the pieces 

 to be furnished are several columns about a foot in diameter and ten feet in 

 length. 



Dr. Hayes, who has carefully examined this marble, pronounces the basis 

 to be an indefinite mixture of serpentine and greenish- white talc ; with a 

 silicate of alumina and protoxyds of iron and manganese, which serves to 

 render it compact and probably imparts much of the green color. Some 

 specimens also contain actinolite, with talc firmly united so as to present a 

 close texture and considerable resistance to fracture. The portion of chrome 

 iron ore in crystalline grains, varies in different specimens ; but it is never 

 large enough to seriously interfere with the operations of sawing and polish- 

 ing. The white portions of the marble, Dr. Hayes has ascertained to be an 

 anhydrous carbonate of magnesia, nearly pure. 



